Re: Is there such a thing as good and bad PPP sessions

As I understand it PPP carries your data to a gateway server. From there it enters your ISP's network and gets routed appropriately. It is possible that one or more of your ISP's gateway servers is having problems and that by bouncing your session you get put on a better server.

PlusNet have suffered this a couple of times (for over six months a couple of years ago).

As part of my migration discussions, Uno let me have the URL for their tester and on a bad session I was only getting circa 55 Mbps from their Sheffield based multi thread tester and circa 65 Mbps from their single thread tester, whilst pulling circa 73Mbps from their Reading based multi thread tester.

Re: Is there such a thing as good and bad PPP sessions

As I understand it PPP carries your data to a gateway server. From there it enters your ISP's network and gets routed appropriately. It is possible that one or more of your ISP's gateway servers is having problems and that by bouncing your session you get put on a better server.

PlusNet have suffered this a couple of times (for over six months a couple of years ago).

I have performed over 50 PPP resets over the last few days and performed a traceroute for each of them.

There appear to be four different gateway servers I bounce between and I have good and bed sessions on each of them. Only a third of the PPP resets result in a good session.

So it definitely isn't as simple as good and bad gateways.

I still suspect there are some routing issues within the TTB network, as there is some significant variability in the results from one of the bad sessions.

(Bad only being a relative term here, as they are still better than many are able to achieve.)

Re: Is there such a thing as good and bad PPP sessions

I have performed over 50 PPP resets over the last few days and performed a traceroute for each of them.

There appear to be four different gateway servers I bounce between and I have good and bed sessions on each of them. Only a third of the PPP resets result in a good session.

So it definitely isn't as simple as good and bad gateways.

You can't rely on a traceroute. Your traceroute packets are encapsulated within PPP so they can't tell you every server your data actually passes through. PN staff said much the same thing, that it wasn't the visible gateways but was servers not visible to end users. But there did seem to be some gateways that were far, far more likely to be a problem than others.

Of course it might not be the same issue but unfortunately unless you have the help of Pulse8 support you may not be able to diagnose any further.

Truth is that as end users we can't see the real network. A traceroute might show 12 hops when in fact there are double that.

Re: Is there such a thing as good and bad PPP sessions

You can't rely on a traceroute. Your traceroute packets are encapsulated within PPP so they can't tell you every server your data actually passes through. PN staff said much the same thing, that it wasn't the visible gateways but was servers not visible to end users. But there did seem to be some gateways that were far, far more likely to be a problem than others.

Of course it might not be the same issue but unfortunately unless you have the help of Pulse8 support you may not be able to diagnose any further.

Truth is that as end users we can't see the real network. A traceroute might show 12 hops when in fact there are double that.

Interestingly if I do a traceroute of the Mac Terminal app it shows three IP addresses on several hops, which I assume is load balancing, but I take your point.

Unfortunately one of the limitations of Pulse8 is that they only act as first line support and then handover to TTB and I have no confidence in TTB ever getting to the bottom of what their network is doing.

I'm sure the expertise is there in TTB, but Pulse8 don't seem to be able to access it.

This is one of the principle reasons for me considering migrating. Not so much to improve performance as the best I can do is match what I get now on a good session, but to have a level of confidence that I can access some decent technical support should I need it.

Re: Is there such a thing as good and bad PPP sessions

This is one of the principle reasons for me considering migrating. Not so much to improve performance as the best I can do is match what I get now on a good session, but to have a level of confidence that I can access some decent technical support should I need it.

Good luck finding that. For sure it won't be easy at the Pulse8 price point. I'm not sure where you can get good support these days other than AAISP and possibly IDNet neither of which operate at the cheap end of the market (which is probably not a coincidence).

Re: Is there such a thing as good and bad PPP sessions

Good luck finding that. For sure it won't be easy at the Pulse8 price point. I'm not sure where you can get good support these days other than AAISP and possibly IDNet neither of which operate at the cheap end of the market (which is probably not a coincidence).

I approached Pulse8 with an it's worth a try attitude, knowing that I wasn't tied in for 12 months.

As a past customer of IDNet and Zen, I am not unhappy to happy a bit more for better service. These two now form the short list as Aquiss, A&A and Uno are all not able to offer me a migration option; it would have to be a new line with a new phone number, which is not an option I wish to take.

IDNet have a much larger migration fee, but work out roughly the same over 12 months once call costs are taken into account, as long as I pay for the 12 months up front. Zen does offer me a free Zyxel 1312 or discounted 8924 though.